代写哲学essay LIBERALIZATION OF LOGICAL POSITIVISM

LIBERALIZATION OF LOGICAL POSITIVISM

代写哲学essay Similarly, in the field of political philosophy, one will probably not be able to translate statements on the political level into

Verificationist criterion of meaningfulness (at least for nonanalytic sentences). (Carnap first keeps something like it.)

Many of the propositions that are part of “metaphysics” are neither subject to confirmation or disconfirmation, nor analytic. Thus they are meaningless. (A keeper.)

The proper function of philosophy is to engage in linguistic analysis. Carnap (in the autobiography): “I explained earlier that we had regarded the theses of phenomenalism, materialism, realism and so on in their traditional forms as pseudo-theses. On the other hand, we believed that we obtained fruitful philosophical problems if we directed our attention not to the traditional ontological problems, but rather to the questions, either theoretical or practical, concerning the corresponding language forms.” (A keeper.) 代写哲学essay

4. Translatability of each meaningful (nonanalytic?) sentence into a sentence in sense-datum language. This gets rejected: See Ayer, Introduction to the Second Edition of Language, Truth and Logic, pp. 23-24. More importantly, see the remarks by Carnap below. 代写哲学essay

Use of a sense-datum language as the “basic” language into which all sentences must be translated. Hints of “phenomenalism”. As a metaphysical doctrine? As a linguistic doctrine? (This gets rejected.)

Consider #5. Use of a sense-datum language as the “basic” language into which all sentences must be translated.

Carnap argued for a neutral attitude towards which language to use as a basis: phenomenal (the language of sense-data) or physical. This is from the intellectual autobiography: “With respect to the problem of the basis, my attitude was again ontologically neutral. For me it was simply a methodological question of choosing the most suitable basis for the system to be constructed, either a phenomenalistic or a physicalistic basis. The ontological theses of the traditional doctrines of either phenomenalism or materialism remained for me entirely out of consideration.” 代写哲学essay

“... if one proceeds from the discussion of language forms to that of the corresponding metaphysical theses about the reality or unreality of some kind of entities, he steps beyond the bounds of science.” “[Schlick] and Reichenbach, like Russell, Einstein and many of the leading scientists, believed that realism was the indispensable basis of science. I maintained that what was needed for science was merely the acceptance of a realistic language, but that the thesis of the reality of the external world was an empty addition to the system of science.” The Principle of Tolerance.

Consider #1. Verificationist criterion of meaningfulness (at least for nonanalytic sentences).

Some relevant remarks from Carnap’s autobiography: “Neurath had always rejected the alleged rock bottom of knowledge. According to his view, the totality of what is known about the world is always uncertain and continually in need of correction and transformation; it is like a ship for which there is no dry dock and which therefore has to be repaired and rebuilt while floating on the open ocean. ... Thus some of us, especially Neurath, Hahn and I, came to the conclusion that we had to look for a more liberal criterion of significance than verifiability.” How does this affect the phenomenalistic-physicalistic debate? “The important feature in our methodological position was the emphasis on the hypothetical character of the laws of nature, in particular, of physical theories. ... It was clear that the laws of physics could not possibly be completely verified.” 代写哲学essay

Ayer made several increasingly attempts to give a precise statement of the verificationist criterion.

Attempt 1. 代写哲学essay

A sentence is factually significant to any given person, if, and only if, he knows how to verify the proposition which it purports to express—that is, if he knows what observations would lead him, under certain conditions, to accept the proposition as being true, or reject it as being false. …. [Otherwise] it is, if not a tautology, a mere pseudo-proposition.

Attempt 2. (Language, Truth and Logic, pp 38-39)

First: An experiential proposition is a proposition which records an actual or possible observation. Principle of verifiability: A genuine factual proposition is one from which some experiential

propositions can be deduced, in conjunction with certain other premises ... without being deducible from those other premises alone.

Problem with Attempt 2 (Ayer, Introduction to the 2nd edition of LTL, page 11)

Let S be any statement and O be any observation statement that cannot be deduced from S. 代写哲学essay

Example: S is “The Absolute enters into, but is itself incapable of, evolution and progress” and O is “there is a pain in my right foot.”

Note that O cannot be deduced from S.

Note that O can be deduced from the following two statements: S and (if S then O). 代写哲学essay

So, O can be deduced from S in conjunction with certain other premises ... without being deducible from those other premises alone.

Conclusion: By the criterion given in Attempt 2, S is a genuine factual statement!

Attempt 3. (Introduction to the 2nd edition of LTL, page 13) 代写哲学essay

First: P is directly verifiable iff either (1) P is an observation-statement or (2) there are observation statements O, O1, …, On such that P & O1 & … & On entails O but O1 & … & On does not entails O.

Second: P is indirectly verifiable iff there are Q, Q1, …, Qn such that (1) P & Q1 & … & Qn entails Q ;(2)Q1 & … & Qn does not entails Q; (3) Q is directly verifiable; and (4) each Qk is either analytic, or directly verifiable, or capable of being independently established as indirectly verifiable.

The idea is that a statement is factually significant iff it is either directly or indirectly verifiable. 代写哲学essay

Problem with Attempt 3 (Church 1949, Review of Language, Truth and Logic, 2nd edition)

Suppose that there are three independent observation sentences O1, O2 and O3. And let S be any sentence at all. Now let P be the sentence,
(~O1 & O2) v ( O3 & ~S)

Notice that (O1 & P) entails O3. So P is directly verifiable. Also, S and P together entail O2.

So S is (indirectly) verifiable. So S is factually significant.

Consider #4. Translatability of each meaningful (nonanalytic?) sentence into a sentence in sense-datum language.

We should update 4 to 4*, below, because we no longer require the base language to be a sensedatum language.
4*. Translatability of each meaningful (nonanalytic?) sentence into a sentence in the language of observation. This gets rejected: See Ayer, Introduction to the Second Edition of Language, Truth and

Logic, pp. 23-24. More importantly, see the remarks by Carnap below.

From Ayer’s Introduction to the 2nd edition of LTL, pages 23-24. 代写哲学essay

A more serious mistake ... was my assumption that philosophical analysis consisted mainly in the provision of “definitions in use”. It is, indeed, true that what I describe as philosophical analysis is very largely a matter of exhibiting the inter-relationship of different types of propositions; but the cases in which this process actually yields a set of definitions are the exception rather than the rule. Thus the problem of showing how statements about material things are related to observation-statements, which is, in effect, the traditional problem of perception, might be thought to require for its solution that one should indicate a method of translating statements about material things into observationstatements, and thereby furnish what could be regarded as a definition of a material thing.

But. in fact, this is impossible; for, as I have already remarked, no finite set of observation statements is ever equivalent to a statement about a material thing. 代写哲学essay

What one can do, however, is to construct a schema which shows what sort of relations must obtain between sense-contents for it to be true, in any given case, that a material thing exists: and while this process cannot, properly speaking, be said to yield a definition, it does have the effect of showing how the one type of statement is related to the other.

Similarly, in the field of political philosophy, one will probably not be able to translate statements on the political level into statements about individual persons; for although what is said about a State, for example, is to be verified only by the behaviour of certain individuals, such a statement is usually indefinite in a way that prevents any particular set of statements about the behaviour of individuals from being exactly equivalent to it. Nevertheless, here again it is possible to indicate what types of relations must obtain between individual persons for the political statements in question to be true: so that even if no actual definitions are obtained, the meaning of the political statements is appropriately clarified.

From Carnap’s “Intellectual Autobiography”

I advised against [physicalizing Freud's psychology by translating each sentence into a behavioristic language] and proposed that they analyze concepts rather than single sentences. For some of the concepts, I thought, it would be possible to find behavioristic and thus physicalistic definitions. But the more fundamental concepts of Freud's theory should be treated as hypothetical concepts, that is, introduced with the help of hypothetical laws in which they occur and of coordinative rules, which would permit the derivation of sentences about observable behavior from sentences involving the fundamental concepts of the theory. 代写哲学essay

In addition to the requirement of complete verifiability we must abandon the earlier view that the concepts of science are explicitly definable on the basis of observation concepts; more indirect methods of reduction must be used. For this purpose I proposed a particular form of reduction sentences. In the course of further investigations it became clear that a schema of this simple form cannot suffice to introduce concepts of theoretical science. Still, the proposed simple form of reduction sentences was useful because it exhibited clearly the open character of the scientific concepts, i.e., the fact that their meanings are not completely fixed.

The thesis of physicalism, as originally accepted in the Vienna Circle, says roughly: Every concept of the language of science can be explicitly defined in terms of observables; therefore every sentence of the language of science is translatable into a sentence concerning observable properties. I suggested that only reducibility to observation predicates need be required of scientific concepts, since this requirement is sufficient for the confirmability of sentences involving those concepts.

4. Furthermore, I showed that our earlier thesis of phenomenalistic positivism was in need of a more liberal reformulation in an analogous way, so that translatability was replaced by confirmability.

Theoretical physics has long used concepts which do not refer to anything directly observable; let us call them theoretical concepts. ... In my article on Testability [1936-10] I stressed the open character of scientific concepts, their incomplete interpretation, and the impossibility of translating the sentences of the scientific language into terms designating observables. This position provided a
greater freedom of choice of linguistic forms and of procedures for the introduction of new concepts. 代写哲学essay

Soon I proceeded further in this direction. In Foundations of Logic and Mathematics ... I showed how the system of science or of a particular scientific field, e.g., physics, can be constructed as a calculus whose axioms represent the fundamental laws of the field in question. This calculus is not directly interpreted. It is rather constructed as a "freely floating system", i.e., as a network of primitive theoretical concepts which are connected with one another by the axioms. On the basis of these primitive concepts, further theoretical concepts are defined.

Eventually, some of these are closely related to observable properties and can be interpreted by semantical rules which connect them with observables.

... By these rules the floating network is "anchored to the solid ground of observable facts". Since the rules involve only certain derivative concepts, the interpretation of the theoretical terms supplied by the rules is incomplete. But this incomplete interpretation is sufficient for an understanding of the theoretical system, if "understanding" means being able to use in practical applications; this application consists in making predictions of observable events, based on observed data, with the help of the theoretical system. For this purpose it is sufficient that certain derivative terms of the theoretical system are interpreted by the semantical rules.

The partial interpretation for the theoretical language is then given by rules of correspondence which permit the derivation of sentences of the one language from sentences of the other. It is important to realize that these rules involve only a particular class of terms and sentences of the theoretical language. The observation language speaks about observables. But "observability" is a rather vague term which may be understood in a narrower or wider sense. I gradually preferred to exclude from the observation language more and more scientific terms, even some of those which many physicists regard as observation terms because they refer to magnitudes for which there are simple procedures of measurement, e.g., "mass" and "temperature". 代写哲学essay

As mentioned above, the interpretation of theoretical terms is always incomplete, and the theoretical sentences are in general not translatable into the observation language. These disadvantages are more than balanced by the great advantages of the theoretical language, viz. the great freedom of concept formation and theory formation, and the great explanatory and predictive power of a theory

LOGICAL POSITIVISM, LIBERALIZED, mid 30s to mid 40s

Verificationist criterion of meaningfulness (at least for nonanalytic sentences).
1*. There is some way to distinguish genuine factual/empirical/scientific sentences (or statements or propositions) from metaphysical sentences (or statements or propositions). (Here we are putting aside analytic statements.)

Many of the propositions that are part of “metaphysics” are neither subject to confirmation or disconfirmation, nor analytic. Thus they are meaningless.

The proper function of philosophy is to engage in linguistic analysis.
4*. Translatability of each meaningful (nonanalytic?) sentence into a sentence in the language of observation.

Use of a sense-datum language as the “basic” language into which all sentences must be translated.

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